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Short Answer:Because in the long-term you may end up paying more in fees than the amount you invested. $25,000 invested over 25 years will cost you $28,569 in mutual fund fees.Long Answer:$1000 invested in the stock market 50 years ago would be worth $514,000 today. However with fees of 2.2% the investor would only be left with $193,000 today. $321,000 would have been lost to fees. John C. Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group used the word "shocking" to describe this loss of 63% of the market's cumulative return to mutual fund fees.Another example, assume you invest $25,000, after 25 years you will pay this much in fees:if you invested in Mutual Funds: $28,569.29if you invested in Index Funds: $11,085.45if you invested in an ETF: $2,762.34if you invested in individual Stocks: $49.95The fees for each of the investment types were determined from Vanguard and TD Direct Investing.Vanguard lists the following fees:Mutual Funds: 2.15%Index Funds: 0.84%ETFs: 0.21%The commission (fee) for buying stocks is listed at $9.99 per trade by TD Direct Investing.The Mutual Fund Fee Calculator from OSC was used to calculate each of the fees. The calculator is available online here:Mutual fund fee | GetSmarterAboutMoney.caThe following values were used:Investment amount: $25,000Investment held for: 25 yearsRegular contribution: $0Past return: 5.5%Management Fee: 2.15%A typical $25,000 portfolio of individual stocks is composed of 5 trades of $5,000 each resulting in a cost of: 5 x $9.99 = $49.95Using the Mutual Fund Fee Calculator the total costs for each of the investment types over 25 years will be:if you invested in Mutual Funds: $28,569.29if you invested in Index Funds: $11,085.45if you invested in an ETF: $2,762.34if you invested in individual Stocks: $49.95Vanguard Source:The case for low-cost index fund investingTD Direct Investing Source:Fees & Pricing - TD Direct Investing

If you are inheriting that much money, the first thing you should invest in is a financial literacy education. There is no rush to invest the money, so spend some time educating yourself. Read some books, take some classes, and even an online course or two. If you want some recommendations on what books and courses are good, I would be happy to give them to you.As for the actual investments, Warren Buffett himself has said that if you don’t want to research individual stocks, then the best place to invest your money would be a low cost ETF (Exchange Traded Fund), specifically the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. They are very similar to mutual funds, but extremely cheaper to own. The average annual cost of a Mutual Fund, according to John Bogle (The founder of Vanguard) is 2.27%.If you are not sure if that is a lot, then think about this. I looked up the cost of ownership (Fee Calculator) of a $1,000,000 Mutual Fund portfolio invested for 20 years growing at 6% annually. Investment Fee Calculator - See How Fees Reduce Your Returns That 2.27% in fees will cost you $687,000 over the course of 20 years and since that is money that can’t be invested, you will also a missed opportunity cost of $494,000. That portfolio could have grown to $3.2 million over the 20 years, but with the fees and opportunity cost, it only grew to $2 million.An ETF invested for the same length of time at the same rate of return with a fee of 0.04%, which is the annual fee of the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF will grow to $3,181,575. That’s just 25k in fees and 15k in opportunity cost.Fees on investments are just as important as where to invest, but start off educating yourself first.

It’s not so much about who has the best legal team as it is who can afford to pay the most.We’d all love to see some poor lawyer from the famous SHK (School of Hard Knocks) go all John Grisham on the big bad corporate lawyers and grind them into an applause-spewing, tear-jerking pulp.It just doesn’t happen that way. In the hard, cold, fluorescent-lit reality, the guy with the most coin gets to tip the scales. The way this is done is through the use of experts.Imagine a country bumpkin who’s pulled over for drunk driving and is found to have a gun in his truck. It’s a .22 that he used to shoot cans off a fence when his kids were younger. He hasn’t fired it in years.The cops don’t like the bumpkin for whatever reason (he never buys tickets to their ball perhaps), and they happen to have an unsolved murder that they’ve been hammered about in the press… So, they run a ballistics test on the weapon. Surprise! It’s a match, or so sayeth their expert Their “expert” could be the one guy in the station that went to a three-day seminar on ballistics, or it could be some highly trained person with multiple degrees, including chemistry and metallurgy.If Bumpkin Boy takes it to court, his defense (no matter how charming) has to deal with the cop’s “expert.” If BB can’t come up with an iron clad alibi (I was dining with the governor in front of a televised audience as part of a national telethon to raise money for homeless children), then he’s screwed. It doesn’t matter if the cop’s witness is a real pro, or a twenty cent hack. Nobody in the courtroom can challenge his authority, so BB’s gonna bunk with Bubba.(We’ve all heard of Bubba, right? He’s everywhere.)However, if BB has a rich uncle who can front some cash for an expert, then BB can challenge the cop’s “expert” and level the playing field. If the cop’s expert is their own shill, then the prosecution might have to spring for a real pro. That could mean that the case gets dropped right there. What an admission from the bullshit boys in blue that it was all a lie, eh?Now if BB and his uncle want to win this thing, they’ve got to drop another heavy expert on their side to tilt the scales.These things don’t come cheap:Expert Witness Fee CalculatorFirearms expert in the state of Kansas: ~$300/hr * 20 to 200 hours = $6000 to $60,000 (plus travel and lodging).That’s two year’s wages for our BB.Maybe BB could get a public defender?Let’s quickly look down that seedy alley:Yeah… Not looking so good. The public defenders have a third or less of the budget we allocate to the prosecution.It would appear that the government has already decided that BB’s guilty before he was even pulled over. Merely by choosing where to allocate resources, we’ve decided to believe the cops by default and lock up the innocent with a corrupt system.The Public Defender would try his best, but…Graphs Credit: Charts: Why You’re in Deep Trouble If You Can’t Afford a Lawyer (You should take a look at indigent defense spending in the states vs other democracies).Speaking of democracies… You should know that most of your representatives in congress are lawyers. You’ll be fighting them too. How? Well, they’ve been busily writing laws to make prosecution *easier* in this country for decades. How easy? Go read what the standard of proof is in a “conspiracy” case:Opinion | The Burden of Proof in ConspiracySo… If this is a Grisham novel, (or Pratchett because million-in-one chances are a sure thing) then you’ve got this. Nothing to worry about.If your case is going to be “heard” in the real world, then I hope you’ve got money.